Monday, February 25, 2008

The long-rumored and much overdue full-length CD from Coppice Halifax has finally arrived! 77 minutes of wet leaves, shorelines, treebark, smoke, lumber yards, woodshops, erosion and sunshine, all fit together like rusty puzzle-pieces to form 5 longform collages. Incubated in the humid south since 2006, and picking up where 1983 left off, Coppice Halifax shares the same family tree as other works by Brian, such as Eight Thousander or some of the more textural Milieu releases. Live guitars and organs sit in dusty corners of the stereo field, scattered bits of dialogue and percussion filter through the grainy haze of outdoor sounds and vinyl surface noise, and somehow melodies that sound as old as the rings on a tree-stump emerge from the din, painting a unique tapestry of music that is equal parts ambient-cornerstone and lo-fi cassette tape bliss. Limited to just 60 hand-assembled copies in the EED trademark swivel-case, with David Tagg's signature design making it a truly special affair. Topped off with a cool 83 keychain that your friends are sure to be jealous of!

EDIT: As of my writing this tonight, David and I realized that we burnt an unfinished version of track four (Second Lake/Beach Glass) on all sixty discs! Not too terrible of a mistake (Second Lake is the track that appears on the discs, Beach Glass was a short 2 and a half minute addendum that was left off accidentally) but still one worth noting here. As we've only done 60 of these, we'll probably repress it later somewhere down the line, and rest assured the proper version of this track will appear there, but until then, the least we can do is offer all of you an MP3 of the finished piece!

For February at SSR, we've got a very special post Valentines Day push on the swing: Brian Grainger's newest 21MG Series recording Sun Trails. Quite possibly the most melodic pill-disc yet, Sun Trails is a warm solitary guitar improvisation that depicts a cool blue landscape being gradually covered with pure orange heat and light. A pretty swell of chords that is eventually taken over by the longing drones of sadness, where you can almost hear Spring calling after Old Man Winter has passed out asleep in the woods.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Well, I know it isn't quite Spring yet, but I thought I'd let anyone who reads the blog know that I have been cleaning and rearranging my music room to make more space for new equipment and to better accommodate multiple musicians, and in doing so I have found a number of items that I can indeed part with. Any money I can make on this stuff will just go straight to recording equipment and things like that, so if you're interested in various Milieu goodies or records from my personal collection, please check out my Ebay and Discogs shop pages:

Recently found a very pleasant review for 3753 Cruithne over at Popmatters! Thanks to Mark Schiller for listening!

3753 Cruithne, for those who might not know, is the name of an asteroid that happens to share its orbital path with that of Earth. It sounds dangerous, that we would be sharing our orbit with an asteroid, but it seems that the actual path of 3753 Cruithne, its irregular orbit constantly influenced by the various celestial bodies that it nears, is in no danger of actually impacting earth for millions of years to come. This backdrop is perfect for the sort of patient, beautiful ambience that VCV supplies on their album named after this benign, fascinating asteroid. Created entirely with guitars, the music is extremely appealing to the ear, the sort of stuff that fades easily into the background, enhancing the environment in which it appears. The drones stretch endlessly, the album lasts 79 minutes… honestly, all of the components of the prototypically perfect ambient album are present. Of course, the audience for this sort of thing is very much limited, which hurts its potential as the sort of thing that could break a band into the big time. Perhaps that’s for the best—one gets the sense that 3753 Cruithne is better suited to being a hidden treasure anyway.

About Me

I make a lot of music, I help run a couple great record labels, I'm happily married, I'm better at school than I used to be, I'm half English and half Italian, I really love food, I'm named after my father's favorite Rolling Stones.